Evaluate in vitro different bio agents for growth of Rhizoctonia bataticola

Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L) is an important pulse crop of India popularly known as ‘Gram’. In India, it is cultivated on nearly about 10.22 million ha. area with an annual production of 09.88 metric tonnes and productivity of 967 kg/ha. The Marathwada region contributes the 6.58 lakh ha. area with production of 06.64 lakh tonnes and productivity of 918 kg/ha., during Rabi. (Anonymous, 2014). Of the major fungal diseases infecting chickpea, dry root rot incited by Rhizoctonia bataticola (taub) Butl. is one of the most destructive and wide spread disease which cause average yield losses of 05-50% (Anonymous, 2012). Keeping in view, economic importance of chickpea and losses incurred by dry root rot disease, present investigations on the aspects viz., survey against R. bataticola were undertaken during Rabi, 2014-15 at the Department of Plant Pathology, College of Agriculture, Badnapur. The suppression of growth of pathogen was maximum with Trichoderma viride (86.62 per cent) followed by Trichoderma harzianum(66.33 per cent) and the least effective bioagents was Aspergilus niger (55.13 per cent). Trichoderma viride showed best performance against the pathogen.